RoR: Forum

I have a sense that many people have given over their private capacity to make moral judgments to the government. Now they just root for their 'team' to be the ones in government, so that their 'team' will make the judgments they agree with.

I'm talking mostly about the judging of actions and/or the actor as bad. For example, in the old days, we called someone a bum if they begged for money despite being able to work, and who abused alcohol or drugs. And there existed a kind of social peer pressure that worked to discourage people from being bums. This was a social pressure, one that did not involve initiating force, that pushed in the direction of living a better life. This is the way that a community exerted it's moral standards such that each new generation moved away from what was seen as bad and towards what was seen as good. And if the moral values were rational, overall, the scheme was a good one. And even where the moral values were irrational, they were private, in competition with better values, and didn't have physical force behind them.

Today, the government steps and is in charge of deciding where to apply judgments. Those it applies, it does so with force. It might be a judgment that gay's can't marry, or a judgment that a business cannot refuse to hire anyone from a 'protected minority' - whether from the left or from the right, the judgments are not private expressions of dislike - they are laws enforced at gun point.

And as Professor Machan's article so clearly states, liberty requires that we not allow government to enforce what should be private judgments - even those we find offensive.

Like a kind of Gresham's law of moral judgments, the bad mechanism of government making moral judgments (be they from the left, or from the right), seem to drive out the healthy moral judgments of free people. Like an economy where too much of the wealth is going to government, the private sector loses vitality and strength. And in the making or moral judgments, when government takes these on, the private sector becomes morally flaccid and irritatingly factional.

I guess the bottom line is that when we transfer power or money to the government, we will get weaker, not just in physical power to exercise our full range of liberties, not just weaker economically, but also weaker morally.

Post 1

Saturday, July 27, 2013 - 8:06am

I enjoyed this article; it really helps focus what makes a free society 'free.'

It seems at constant issue is the demarcation between private matters and public matters. The radical totalitarians tend to advocate no such boundaries: almost everything is a public and collective tribal matter and the entire nation is subject to tribal forced association on every matter imaginable. Radical libertarians tend to advocate no such boundaries: everything is a private and individual matter snd the entire nation is subject only to adherence to individual freely associated rules of interaction.

The political battlefield does not respect any established rules of limited conflict; the battlefield might be anywhere, and the demarcation of 'public vs private' is in some ways like another analogy I recently accessed, the tactic of WWII 'Island hopping.'

But the conflict is not symmetric: the totalitarians are the agressors in this conflict. As Reagan said on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, force used for liberation is not the same as force used for domination/conquest. However, Libertarians are in defensive mode and there is no single 'front' on which to wage this battle.

'The' barbarians are not at 'the' gate or even 'the' walls, they are raining from the sky like paratroopers. Their weapons are the appeal of their running downhill only ideas, foisted on our nation for well over a hundred years now in a deliberate attack on freedom. This battle of ideas is not with the little instructed 'I'm a Social Engineer' cupcake, but with the agenda driven folks who once instructed the folks who once instructed the folks who once instructed the folks who instructed her. She is just part of the current wave of instructed robots that are the result of this long term plan of complete 'socialization' -- the encroachment of the term 'matter of public/tribal debate' onto -everything- that was foisted via a deliberate over-running of our targeted institutions of authority-- an attack that was permitted exactly by the nature of our once free state, as well as inevitable because of the nature of the enemies of freedom.

Libertarians are not late to the battle, they are late to the realization that this long term attack has been an existential conflict for freedom.

What is a most pressing need? To establish clarity in the nature of the battle, via the power of ideas. To redirect this conflict from the current rout and full retreat of freedom to one where the focus on established 'fronts' -- demarcation of the conflict -- has a prayer of bringing into focus the nature of the conflict. Ideas like the filter of 'free association' vs 'forced association' are exactly the weapons needed to start to try and thwart the current cultural momentum.

The current state of this battle is well beyond any condition where the losing libertarians are in any position to demand purity; we are on the brink of a rout, a complete over-running of all boundaries by paratrooping barbarians falling from the skies...and they are robots.

We need to find a way, a path, a realpolitik way, and part of that realpolitik is to not push positions that make it easy for our adversaries to denigrate. To me, one such battle is in the demarcation between public and private commerce. Purity might dictate that we advocate the same freedom to discriminate in public commerce that exists by default in private commerce, but that is too easily painted as the KKK. It is not enough to label it as odious; a way must be found to integrate the concept of peer based freedom on the public anonymous commons with ideas that are also central to the concept of libertarian freedom.

Here is my attempt, and I've described it several times before. It is the difference between freedom in a free nation, and anarchy in a free nation. It is a recognition that the streets outside our homes cannot have a toll booth every 100 feet, with out private property extending to the boundary of our neighbor across the street. Advocacy of a purity that a] will never happen and b] could not function if it did happen and c] is so far from where we are fighting the current existential battle that it isn't even in the same theater of conflict does nothing but help insure that the ideas we do advovate will be anything other than fringe sidenotes in a losing battle. That is RealPolitik. The privatization of everything is not a winning tactic in the current rout.

This by necessity means, a demarcation between what is properly private and what is properly public. There is an anonymous public commons that we share with our peers living in freedom. What are the consequences of that fact?

We all gave aspirations as well as needs, but those are all goals. In complete anarchy, each of us is free to sprint in a straight line between where we are to our goals, without regard to any other peer doing the same. If we collide, we collide, and such collisions are then only avoided by self interest and the mass of larger peers or mobs of peers sprinting towards their goals. This is exactly traffic in Bangladesh. Physics rules, biggest vehicle drives where it will, when it will.

In a free nation of peers, who recognize the peer based freedom of their peers, we navigate to our respective destinations, mindful of the trajectories of others. We all get to our respective goals, without collisions, without the need or desire to tell others what goals they should have. But while we are navigating the public commons we recognize the peer based mutual responsibilities we have to each other, as peers. We -respect- each other's freedom -- which is a key ingredient in defending our own.

Imagine life in a public commons in which every peer recognizes, as a key element of defending hsi own freedom, the responsibility of respecting each other's freedom.

In such a tribe, the scofflaws would stand out. Anf what would such scofflaws be doing? Infringing the peer based freedom of others on the public commons. The justification for state action on those public commons would be clear.

The requirement to politely respect the freedom of our peers on the public commons is not an impediment to freedom; it is and should be a required cornerstone of our freedom. And that is exactly the light that the Civil Rights Act(s) must be viewed. We are -- all of us, as peers -- totally free to discriminate in private commerce in any manner we choose. It is analogous to having private race tracks and conducting demolition derbies on them. We have that right in freedom.

We don't have the right to initiate demolition derbies on the Interstates. That would be forced association. We have a peer based responsibility on the public commons that doesn't exist in our private commerce.

An insistence on radical libertarian purity -- our private lives extend everywhere up to the boundaries of other private lives, with no public anonymous commons, and an embrace of open discrimination, will guarantee that libertarian ideas remain struggling in this rout.

Libertarians need to find a path outside of the 'odious' KKK box that they are currently easily contained in when they start to publicly advocate for discrimination openly directed at our peers sharing this free nation. Losing this battle is not limited to losing the right of open public discrimination; it is as well about losing the right of even private discrimination.

regards,
Fred

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/27, 10:56am)

Post 2

Saturday, July 27, 2013 - 10:08am

Fred,

That's a brilliant post... I loved these metaphors: The tribe wanting everything public, the raining down of taught robots, the running downhill arguments... Brilliant!

I agree that pushing the right to discriminate, irrationally, in private areas is easily attacked in a very effective way - given the current state of the political education. And I agree that, in the name of succeeding there needs to be a change in tactics. But I disagree with changing our principles or ignoring the underlying nature that gave rise to those principle could be the proper answer. What we need to do is shift the argument by going on the attack - and finding the most effective attacks. We have to develop styles of argument that are effective. I say this because one of the key differences between us the robots is that we don't hold a belief that the ends justify the means - that isn't you, it isn't me, and it isn't our side.

There is no demarcation that require us to call a minarchy based upon individual rights, especially private property rights, "anarchy in a free nation." We don't need toll booths at each person's front yard, but a person could put one up if he wanted it. Or he could join in a free association with hundreds, or even millions of other home owners in an association of some kind that allowed each other certain abilities to pass freely along marked lines using a RFID tag... Oh, wait, that already exist to a degree - it's a toll road with automated fee collection from those who subscribe. :-)

You are very right to point out the problems of that advocacy of "purity" - it is ineffective, even self-defeating. It is only okay at place like RoR where it is part of the chewing on ideas to understand them better - but not okay out among non-Objectivists where the context is an argument with a progressive who doesn't value truth, and in front of an audience, most of whom don't grasp the relationship between an ideal minarchy in some distant future to where we are now relative to the particular issue being argued.

The privatization of nearly everything is definitely where we want to go, but hardly ever the best argument. An effective argument has to be framed in terms of the what the other party already understands and wants. Privatization is, therefore, only offered up when it is a means to what is desired and understood by the other party - I'd argue private schools as the best way to cure the many ills of our current government run school system and I'd explain it in terms of parents being able to own their own choices in the education of their children. I'd stay focused on the benefits of liberty in the arena of education, not an argument whose central beneficiary is "privatization." We make a mistake of arguing in favor of the system instead of the goals.
---------------

There is an anonymous public commons that we share with our peers living in freedom.

I agree. But most of it is in the area of culture and that isn't an area where we want to exercise force to stop cultural collisions. We only want to use force as self-defense, or retaliation, against the initiation of force.

We make laws that define what constitutes a legal, binding contract. Notice that we have force waiting in the wings to spring on those that abuse a contract even though it can be difficult to see where any initiation of force occurred in a contractual disagreement. Party A and Party B disagree about a term in a contract they both freely signed. Neither is attempting fraud. They step into a civil court, a judgment is rendered, and if the losing party doesn't cough up, the court will send gun bearing officers to use force. Our legal system is a shared commons that has real value because it is better to have a way that civil conflicts can be resolved in a rational, just fashion. And this is the relationship between civil rulings and the value of individual rights. A society must have this peaceful means of settling differences so that we can be free from the threat of initiated violence as a means, or result, of commerce.

But how can we draw a line when someone else says we need to use courts to enforce other regulations and they would be good for society? We can only fall back on individual rights. Force can only answer force. We can't use force to make a person use their own property in ways that they don't want to. "You must serve a lunch to this person who smells bad and looks like a freak and has an ugly attitude, because they are a 'protected minority'." Nope, that's the road to tribal ends justifying the cannibalizing of this or that individual. (Note: here on RoR it makes sense to argue that discrimination is a right, that it, as Thomas Sowell has shown, can provide economic benefits to the discriminated against class that if left alone, will erode away the discrimination, etc. But it is not an argument to made when baited by a progressive robot working the levers of identity politics.)

What I'm arguing here is that individual rights are the best possible of all mechanisms for creating the rules of the road such that we can navigate without collisions. It is the perfect bright line for separating anarchy on one side and degrees of tribalism on the other.

I argue for that 'radical libertarian purity' HERE on RoR, but only in the proper context. Because, even here on RoR I will always maintain that we need to focus on our direction and the next step to be taken. And that is massively different than the approach that says total minarchy immediately or nothing.
-----------------------

Libertarians need to find a path outside of the 'odious' KKK box...

Agreed. But I'd look for a path that contained these items:
1) Recognition that the KKK argument is a tactic, not a truth and start by pointing out that Progressive have a habit of lying to achieve their ends.
2.) Ridicule them for false accusations of racism.
3) Attacking instead of defending and shifting away from the arguments they choose
4) Attacking Progressivism's dishonesty and exposing the drive to crush liberty and to dominate in all of their goals
5) Turning the argument back on them: It is the progressives that are like the KKK and divide people into groups based upon color, and it is the progressives that want to make laws that permanently make some people victims based upon their skin color. Their entire political strategy is to drum up hatred between groups, use that hatred to achieve power, use the power to replace all individual liberty with control by government... till it controls every tiny aspect of every person's life.

Having said all of this, I'd admit that I'm not the best person to formulate the tactics for countering those arguments - I enjoy the fight too much. But I would caution against ever leaving that bright line of individual rights even a tiny bit - as the underlying principle - just argue differently than that adolescent fantasy-style of blind purity in the face of tribal trickery.

Post 3

Saturday, July 27, 2013 - 10:46am

Steve:

As usual, it's easy to get two reasonable folks to agree with each other. In some future culture, I'd much prefer folks to freely and openly identify themselves -- it is the required foundation of free association.

But we have to get from where we are to where we want to be. That inevitably involves politics, and in what I perceive as a current rout, RealPolitiks.

The CRAs are among the first bombs lobbed at any resurgence of libertarian ideas in the current tribe. Libertarians are stuck on the beach, about to be driven into the sea. This is an existential conflict for the ideas central to freedom, and libertarians need to find a way to get off the beach.

The analogy is incomplete; this isn't an invasion of Fortress Europe. This is Dunkirk.

It has to be more than acceptance of 'odious' as the price we are willing to pay, because politically, odious is unacceptable.

We all -- all of us -- discriminate in our private commerce, using any basis we deem desirable, without limitations. What is at risk in the current rout is not a failure to restore some right to publicly and openly discriminate, as part of some future more consistent libertarian culture. That isn't even a part of any current battle.

What is at risk in the current rout is the loss of the right to privately discriminate. A firewall between public and private-- a beachhead, the front of this existential battle, needs to finally be established. The 'socialization of everything' is washing over all defensive boundaries.

Libertarians do not help themselves by lighting the bombs in those defenses for their adversaries. Of course the left is crippling those they claim to want to help, by turning them into forever children in a sea of tribal paternalistic 'adults.' Many of the targeted forever 'children' have come to that realization totally without any help, because it is obvious. But one battle at a time, because freedom is on the ropes.

Here is another stink in the current political wind; "... a teachable moment..." Consider for a moment the utter audacity.. the smug paternalistic megalomania ... implicit in that phrase directed at peers living in freedom.

Excuse me? "Teachable moment?" Are there perhaps some children about in the current political debate?

Be wary of it, and question it immediately when it rears its smug head in -any- political context, because it is the first step down the bloody road to a re-education camp, and this species of naked sweaty apes is -so-capable of that.

regards,
Fred

Post 4

Saturday, July 27, 2013 - 12:11pm

Steve:

It's 2013.

At this point, 2016 GOP candidate is going to be a choice between Rand Paul and Chris Christie.

How do we keep from once again ending up holding our nose in 2016 and voting for more of the same with Chris Christie?

Watching what the same old is doing to Rand Paul is just ... disgusting.

Chris Christie's latest, paraphrased: 'Rand Paul and his libertarian ideas are dangerous.' Sure. And shit for brains Jersey Guy isn't.

Any questions? That is the depth of Christie's debate. That';s all the deeper he needs to go to waddle into power.

I will never vote for that twit under any circumstances-- even if the alternative is Hillary. I just won't vote. Never again, 2012 was the last time I hold my nose and vote for someone I don't support, just because the other guy is worse.

regards,
Fred

Post 5

Saturday, July 27, 2013 - 7:53pm

Fred,

But we have to get from where we are [Dunkirk] to where we want to be. That inevitably involves politics, and in what I perceive as a current rout, RealPolitiks.

I believe we are in a rout, on the beach, and being driven into the ocean because the enemy took the high ground - the educational systems - many generations ago. Almost without opposition. It isn't going to be this or that argument being made poorly or brilliantly in the coming election or the one after it that turns the tide. Sadly, it is going require taking back the educational system for a few generations.... or some equivalent of giving us a population that deserves a good government.

Giving up the right to publicly discriminate, as you put it, is a terrible slippery slope. It does away with the bright line as to what anyone can do the minute they step out of their front door, or engage in any kind of commerce. It says that government can tell us what we can think (or at least what thoughts we can act on which we can't). It is the signal that any existing right can be turned into regulations against its use by just finding the right 'protected minority' that might be involved in a public transaction. Guns? Speech? Religious practices? Freedom from censorship? You name it, and it can be tied up neatly as a package to be pushed towards the slippery slope of political correctness in the public arena.

The leaders of the tribe will never be appeased, and every step will just energize their next move. Progressive means to progress towards state socialism... and don't stop till you get there.
------------

The Republican Party is in tatters, as we know. It has an establishment wing that wants power, but God know why, because they are terrified to exercise what they already have... as if doing anything that might offend the democrats is beyond the pale. It has its big government wing that sees Libertarians as a greater threat to what they want than Obama and his cronies times ten. There are the Religious Right who don't do anything but totally screw up what little is right among the conservatives who should ALL be battling for small government and not a Vatican wish list. And there are the eternal armchair warriors who only care about being able to wage perpetual war around the globe for whatever peculiar cause they currently espouse.

BUT... I suspect that the next set of Republican Primary debates will be well worth the price of admission. I agree with you totally on Chris Christie and it would make me sick to see him trying to make Rand Paul look bad, but I don't think he'll be able to do it for two reasons: 1) Paul can handle himself very well, 2) I suspect that Christie will be up against not just Senator Paul, but also Senator Marco Rubio, and Senator Ted Cruz. The three of them will shred Christie when it comes to his muddled neo-Keynesian economic positions. And who knows who else will be running for a chance to squelch Hillary's dying gasp of overweening ambition. Maybe Senator Ron Johnson? Or what about Senator Mike Lee? It looks like the head dufus of Texas might be willing to embarrass himself again (I hope not). I hope that whoever runs has learned from last time that making a campaign of attacking each other is truly a waste of time and makes them look bad. They need to tie Hillary and Obama together - tightly fastened to the economic, social, and political disaster they have made of the nation by pursuing their hidden Marxist policies, constant lies, and pushing bitter identity-politics.

I don't regret voting for Romney. He was a sufficiently clear cut choice when stacked up against Obama. I was stunned and deeply saddened that so many people voted otherwise after seeing Obama in action for nearly 4 years.

There are pendulum swings one way and then another in the short course of political history and it might be time for a 'throwing-out-the-current rascals' swing. But, there are two trends that are larger than those pendulum swings and they will assert themselves despite temporary shifts cause by pendulums. The first is the one that is causing such grief for us right now. It is about the loss of clear thinking in matters politic or economic by recent generations. That one tells me we are likely to be toast for some time to come. The largest trend of all is towards reason. It certainly works slowly, but better ideas eventually supplant those whose appeal may be strong, but whose soundness just isn't there. Unfortunately, this trend operates over such a large scale of time that nations rise and fall, cultures shine and then dim, all within that slow arc of improvement.

All that being said, man is capable of changing overnight. Magnificent leaders can arise out of the worst crisis people can let the crisis move them to see the light, as easily as they can let panic move them to tribalism. So, there is always a chance things could get better sooner.

Post 6

Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 6:32am

Steve:

Then what is needed -- not that I am anywhere near having a solution -- is an approach to distinguish 'advocacy of the right to publicly discriminate based on any individual preference' from 'advocacy of discrimination based on racism as one instance of that.' Because that is immediately where that goes, because it does include that. And so, the argument must be made why including that is supportive of freedom. That would need to be taken on directly.

We already do, even in public commerce, have the right not to serve people in proper attire or 'grooming.' "No shirt, no shoes, no service." But by complete advocacy of that right, that embraces "Whites only" signs in restaurants.

I've weakly addressed that above; I asserted that I'd prefer to live in nation in which racists openly identified themselves, as an example of what is necessary to inform free association. But we ran that experiment; as a specific form of blanket discrimination, it is irrational and totally baseless, and yet, when the experiment was run, it ran rampant through the local majority tribe. It wasn't a case of a tiny handful of crackpot racists identifying themselves in otherwise civil communities; it was a manifestation of the local unfettered state running amok, the unchecked will of the majority. It was pervasive and accepted and the local norm.

I wish we weren't that species, but we are. I understand the slippery slope argument, but I also cringe at the purity requirement. In order for freedom to be impinged by a restriction on blanket public discrimination based purely on race and no other characteristic, I'd have to understand how that right is supportive of freedom in the tribe, as it is, with the species we are.

Are the CRAs anything more than a reminder to be civil in public? Look, we have a right to freely conduct demolition derbies in our private venues. That is freedom. But we don't have the right to unilaterally initiate demolition derbies on the Interstates. Our freedom to act freely on the Interstates -- when that freedom includes 'the right to conduct demolition derbies' -- is restricted on the Interstates. Not that any of those restrictions actually prevent the eventual public mayhem, but our freedom is restricted in that manner. Sometimes with no more than a polite double yellow line-- a suggestion, a reminder to drive 'civilly' among our peers living in freedom and sharing their same freedom. We not only readily accept that restriction on our absolute freedom, but we all mutually recognize that restriction as supportive of our freedom-- because sometimes we will be in the smaller vehicle.

Are the CRAs anything more than polite reminders to act civilly on the Interstates? Because indeed, someday-- and someday soon, we may all be in the smaller vehicle.

regards,
Fred

Post 7

Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 10:04am

Fred,

You mentioned that we had already tried the experiment of open racism. This is true, but it goes back in history far before the days of the Jim Crow laws. It goes back to a time where the majority of the people saw slavery as okay. The Jim Crow laws were actually a move forward, and their elimination was another major step forward.

You mentioned that the Jim Crow laws were " ... a manifestation of the local unfettered state running amok, the unchecked will of the majority." That is correct on two counts: It was the state that was enforcing racial discrimination. And it happened because the state used 'majority rule' instead of 'individual rights' as their criteria.
------------

You said, "I wish we weren't that species" and I understand what you mean, but we are also the species that fought a civil war to end slavery. Choice makes us a species where each individual chooses, every day, between being heroic or vile.
------------

You said, "... I'd have to understand how that right [a right to discriminate] is supportive of freedom in the tribe..." Well, we always discuss rights using different levels of abstraction. For example, I can discuss my right to say, "x, y, z," which is very concrete, or I can discuss "my right to free speech" and that might be at the level of political or legal rights, or I can discuss my individual rights. You are asking about the right to discriminate as to who you would associate with - quite simply, it is a part of the right to free association. If I say that no one should have the right to speak in favor of communism, then I am putting restrictions on freedom of speech and have turned it into a state-granted permission rather than an unalienable natural right. If someone says that you can only associate (which includes the right to not associate) under specific conditions, then they have turned the right of free association into government permitted associations. Laws against discrimination are just the other side of the Jim Crow laws. One says you can't serve people based upon race, the other says you must serve people despite race. Both are laws that do not arise out of individual rights and both violate the property rights of individuals.

There are two kinds of Civil Rights Acts relative to race - those which make it clear that government may never discriminate on the basis of race, and those that say that private citizens may never discriminate on the basis of race. One is a restriction on government which is very welcome and proper - they directly address things like the Jim Crow laws. The other is a conversion of individual sovereignty and unalienable rights into government is sovereign and grants us permissions to somethings and not others.
-----------

You talk about avoiding the mayhem of driving without traffic rules of any kind. And reasonable rules do promote safety. But they are either totally voluntary, like suggestions about the safe use of a product that come from its manufacturer, or in the form of a contract where people, under free association, make an agreement that includes exercise of some safety rules. That is the nature of our traffic laws. We treat our streets as public property, and we engage in a contract with the public when we get our license to drive that says we will abide by the safety laws. We could have evolved different property arrangements with all private roads (and it would be better) but there would still have been contractual understandings and there would have been safety rules. The government 'ownership' of roads is not a good thing, any more than it is with schools. And one of the negatives is that people don't realize that this is an area where they should be in charge of arranging the rules to be adopted and allowing the principles of competition in a world of free association (no coercion, fraud or theft allowed) to determine the outcomes.
----------

We can't legislate manners, or civility. We understand that some behaviors as irrational, unpleasant and even grossly immoral, and bad for the tribe as well as the individual. But if they don't violate free association - that is if they don't involve initiating force, fraud or theft, should we grant the state the power to interfere? If we do, we destroy the concept of individual rights. We have granted the state the 'right' to violate a right. If anything, that infantalizing of adults tends to lock them into these child-like behaviors.
-----------

Racial discrimination is usually a moral failure most often related to low self-esteem. To make government the 'parent' who will chide and correct this bad 'child' is not a workable solution to the problem. One of the ways that a moderately rational, or moderately civil society's better members can insulate themselves from the assholes that have no conception of civility or manners is with property rights and doing away with public property as much as possible. Then they can use rational discrimination against assholes, and that doesn't violate anyone's rights. It just reinforces the fact that freedom of association includes the freedom to not associate with someone. And you can't allow government to pick and choose which preferences are at the base of that discrimination if you want to keep freedom of association as a right, not a permission.
-------------

Society matures in response to the amount of individual responsibility that is exercised. We tell children to quit fighting and that we expect them to work out their differences without hitting. That is the principle behind a government based upon choice, on being free to associate but not hit, and on individuals assuming responsibility for getting things done without resorting to force.

Government can't make people good. At best, it can just give them the best environment it can relative to freedom from force, fraud and theft. Asking the government to make people be better people is like giving the plumber a gun and telling him his job is to direct our lives so they are better lived.

Post 8

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 6:42am

Steve:

The 'progressives' have been successful -- are being successful -- by patiently employing pressure over the long term. A hundred years and counting. Incremental, ratcheted 'change.'

Attack; advance ; attack ; advance; ... lather, rinse, repeat.

They did not jump right to any endgame and push for those final goals.

After a hundred+ years of that attack, freedom is on the beach at Dunkirk, back to the sea. It's not triumphantly tearing down the walls in Berlin with Reagan. In reality, in this America, two years from the fall of the actual Berlin Wall and the open, global visible failure of centrally planned command and control economy running, -this- nation was swept over by the political argument "It's the Economy, stupid!"

I suspect strongly that any national political debate entering the current battlefield that includes an advocacy of unfettered public racial discrimination is going to get slaughtered as soon as it leaves the trenches.

As it is, libertarians are too easily denigrated and minimalized in the national political scene. A Chris Christie simply has to assert "Paul's libertarian ideas are dangerous," and that is all the deeper the debate needs to be to carry the day; Jersey Shore deep. That is reality. There's very little nuance in this existential conflict. If an idea needs to be explained, it is still born in some theaters of actual action. In niche's of polite, civil discourse, no. But that isn't where the battle is being waged and won/lost. It is going on in a circus tent.

regards,
Fred

Post 9

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 8:54am

Public Spheres Crowd out The Private

Tibor R. Machan

1. In a proper, just society the public sphere focuses on securing the rights of the citizenry. Other tasks are addressed by the citizens, not public officials.

2. A good analogy is a sports event where referees address the rules and those who brake them, while the players carry on with the game, fans with cheering them on, support groups mending them, etc.

3. Once public matters begin to grow, the private ones contract. There will not be room for carrying out the tasks of concern to the citizenry; these will take a back seat and the rules governing public affairs will begin to govern private ones. This will come to a bad mixture.

4. For instance, in the public sector due process must prevail, according to principles of fairness; in the private sector rules of interaction are highly varied, depending on the nature of the tasks at hand. All decisions, once part of the public realm, will be subject to due process.

5. If one wishes to discontinue an association in the private sector, there need be no more to it than fulfillment of contractual obligations and exercise of the "exit option" (like ceasing membership in a club or leaving a team). In the public sector leaving requires showing cause. For example, as when a judge recuses him or herself from the bench.

6. Most generally, private and public personnel function for different purposes; public serves the common good, private individual goals (often in cooperation with like minded others).
(Edited by Machan on 7/29, 9:22am)

(Edited by Machan on 7/29, 9:24am)

Post 10

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 10:31am

Fred,

I suspect strongly that any national political debate entering the current battlefield that includes an advocacy of unfettered public racial discrimination is going to get slaughtered as soon as it leaves the trenches.

I wouldn't enter a debate of that kind. I'd make any debate with a progressive about where do they get the nerve to tell others what they can do, and take away their money. I'd expose their positions as socialism in disguise. We can't give up an area of rights because it will be misused in an argument. And we never have to let them set the terms of the debate.

--------

As it is, libertarians are too easily denigrated and minimalized in the national political scene.

Ridicule is more powerful than it should be in today's society because the average level is self-esteem is lower than it should be in the area of personal independence. The tribe uses peer pressure and threats of being ostracized - ridicule is the cutting edge of the warning to those who stray that they could be tossed out. The progressives have explicitly chosen to use ridicule and ad hominem attacks - Obama would have learned them from a former Chicago community organizer: Saul Alinsky. Libertarians need to learn that to fight ridicule with ridicule. Progressives are in a much more precarious position since they are in favor of end goals they need to keep secret, and since they are trying to ride on the backs of emotionally motivated groups held together with the thin glue of identity politics.
----------

There is no magical combination of political planks, or debate techniques that will let us win. In the end, it is going to be about a nation getting the government it currently deserves (give or take a reasonably wide margin to account for the short term swings of the political pendulum, all within the limits of that slowly movable Overton Window). We, as a society, have to grasp the better ideas before we'll elect the better people and get a better government. (Maybe we even have to be a stronger people psychologically before that will happen - maybe some of that strength our earlier generations had came out out of that environment that cast them into the position of being pilgrims, then pioneers which required a kind self-sustaining personal independence today's environment doesn't demand).

That's a sad conclusion, but I see no way around it. At least from that perspective, I'm less tempted to trade away the right of a private citizen to engage in racial discrimination. It makes it easier to see that doing that would really be trading away the right of free association. - just I am not tempted to trade away the right of a private citizen to speak in favor of Nazism - because it would really be trading away the right to free speech.

Post 11

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 11:11am

I like Professor Machan's observations on the properties of public versus private spheres, and came up with some similar thoughts.
---------

The public sphere belongs to everyone, but is managed by a few and the control of the few by everyone (the owners) is weak. In the private sector, ownership is stronger and the managers are more tightly and directly controlled by the owners.

The public sphere will belong equally to all, but....
- It will be of greater value to some than others,
- It will be used more by some than others,
- Its costs will be borne more by some than by others...
- These, and the tragedy of the commons, are just difficulties that can't be avoided.

The exercise of human will over a sphere of interest differs between private sphere and public sphere because any given area of the public sphere is a monopoly - there will be but one within that context, whereas in a private sphere, the very nature of private means competition can generate as many alternatives as a free market will support.

Professor Machan mentioned that one can discontinue association with elements of the private sphere, but one is always a member of the public sphere - it is like being made a member of a club whether you wanted to join or not.
You may be able to back out of some role within the public sphere, like the professor's example of judge recusing himself, or like a juror getting a waiver, but you can never escape being part of the public sphere itself (apart from leaving for an uninhabited island not under some political jurisdiction).

The gravest danger to a just and proper society comes from those who under guise of doing public good, attempt to hijack control of the public sphere where instead of administering it to minimize it's dominion, they will expand it. Instead of minimizing the effects of the public sphere's inequality of value to its members, inequality of use by members, and inequality of cost to members, they will use those to change the purpose and direction of the public sphere. Instead of using the public sphere to protect rights, it becomes the machine for enslaving and robbing.

In the private sphere some organizations can keep aspects secret and competition will decide if that makes them unattractive enough to be replaced, but secrecy in the public sphere becomes a fraud on everyone - without competitors to escape to.

Because private sphere organizations thrive to the extent that their membership/customers grows, and this tends to grow to the extent that the offerings increase, they will have a radically different style and direction than should be exhibited in the public sphere where the goal should be to shrink in offerings where possible, not grow, and where instead of 'market share' - their customer base is fixed.

Post 12

Monday, July 29, 2013 - 12:47pm